1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to ventilation systems, and particularly to a coupler for maintaining the pivoted damper blade in a ventilation system at a particular indexed position.
2. Related Art
Air volume dampers are used in the ventilation industry to regulate the amount of air to be supplied to or exhausted from a specific area. Conventional commercial dampers require tools to loosen, adjust, and re-tighten the means for positioning the damper blade within the air passageway in the duct. Upon installation of a ventilation system, this process is often repeated numerous times to achieve a proper balance of air flow among the various areas to be ventilated. An attempted improvement to this process, such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,949,625, requires many parts, such as a hinge and hinge bracket, and involves a more complicated installation, including riveting.
Further, it is often difficult to position a damper blade within a ventilation system with consistency because the ducts in different systems vary in size and configuration. These types of ventilation ducts are also often provided with actuators which require attachment to the damper blade shaft at a predetermined angular orientation which, if the angular positioning between the damper blade shaft and the actuator is skewed for any reason, mounting the damper blade shaft to the actuator can be extremely difficult and time-consuming.